The GM Hy-Wire

YouTube Video

I don't know how many have seen this episode of TopGear, but it shows a car made by GM that runs off Hydrogen, with a twist. The hydrogen is stored under thhe car, along with the rest of the engine, and reacts with a fuel cell that lets in Oxygen. And what happens when H & O mix? One gets water. This car has it's own power supply station built in, and it can power a house!

Chance of EVER seeing this in production: Slim To None

reply to post by TheAnt


I'm a day late and a dollar short. YouTube says the video is no longer available.

I have great problems with anyone who espouses hydrogen as the answer to Arab oil. Presently hydrogen is obtained from natural gas. Not a good source, fossil fuel speaking. OTOH, we do know the application of electricity to water will produce hydrogen gas. But where do we get that electricity? We’d need huge quantities of hydrogen gas to run 200 million cars not to speak of our trucks. Lastly, carrying around enough hydrogen to be of any real value puts us into the same dilemma the STS program of NASA suffers from. How to store super cold fuel until you need it. But do not fall for the conspiratorial scam that the oil companies will “buy” the patents from GM.

GM and others producing under their license, would stand to make 10s of billions of dollars over the 17 years of the patent. No oil company or consortium of oil companies could possibly pay anywhere near that much money to squelch a new product of such potential value.


HELP ME!

The Subaru advertises AWD, all wheel drive. Toyota sells some of its cars with 4WD. Four wheel drive. Honda’s Pilot offers yet another variety of four wheel drive I call Part Time. PT4WD.

The very brief descriptions I found at each website really do not answer by questions very well. The Honda Pilot is the best of those explanations.

Here’s what I gleaned from Subaru. They employ a differential at each axle, front and rear and also have a differential in a transfer base between the two ends of the car. It is not clear from their advertising blurbs but it seems there may be a limited slip capability in the rear and transfer differentials. If that is true, and there is no limited slip dif in front, that may be necessary to retain the ability to steer the car.

Toyota OTOH, seems to be saying that its 4WD, like Subaru’s, is always on but the rear wheels are geared to run slightly slower than the front wheels so that the rear wheel drive only comes into play when the front wheels slip.

This is the stated operational format for Honda’s Pilot. The Pilot is a front wheel drive car - SUN - but when a front wheel loses traction, the rear wheels begin to deliver power to the road. Like the Toyota. The Pilot offers what could be a very useful feature, a dash mounted switch that allows you to “Lock” the rear differential without regard to the traction at the front wheels. You have power to all 4 wheels up to about 13 mph, when the rear wheels revert to their normal functioning.

Can anyone give me a good explanation of AWD, 4WD, full time, part time and cover the issue of differentials including limited slip types. In the latter case, I’m also interested how a silicon or fluid differential works.

[edit on 8/26/2007 by donwhite]

Hydrogen is not the way forward. At least not for now. Unless it's produced by bacteria or algae:

Don't Call it Pond Scum; It's a Hydrogen Factory

An in the meantime, while they perfect that technology and lay down the infrastructure, I'm endorsing biodiesel produced from algae:

Pond Scum and The Future

posted by Beachcoma
Hydrogen is not the way forward. At least not for now. Unless it's produced by bacteria or algae: Don't Call it Pond Scum; It's a Hydrogen Factory. An in the meantime, while they perfect that technology and lay down the infrastructure, I'm endorsing biodiesel produced from algae: Pond Scum and The Future

I do not mean to denigrate any (honest) effort to develop alternative fuels. I am against some of them like Archer Daniels Midland - ADM - who are scamming the taxpayers with ethanol. But for Senator Dole’s earmarks, there would be no ethanol on the American market today. It would have died quietly on its own DEMERITS. But by shrewdly playing on our fears and lack of good knowledge, ADM has cost US taxpayers 10s of 100s of millions of dollars. And is going strong in 2007.

Ethanol has one very useful quality. It will not pre-ignite. This allows race car engines to run very high compression ratios. When ethanol is mixed with nitroglycerine the fuel thereby gains power for racing cars. The downside is that ethanol contains about 26,000 btu per gallon and gasoline contains about 34,000 btu per gallon. Mathematically speaking, ethanol has about 76% as much energy as gasoline. In a car race, that means 1 or 2 more pit stops when burning ethanol over the gasoline burring cars. A no-no.

For sure not all America's corn is used to make ADM ethanol. But, between 1995 and 2003, the US Department of Agriculture paid corn growers $37.3 b. A giant subsidy. But ALL the ethanol ADM makes uses corn subsidized by US taxpayers. They get to pay for it TWO times. The ethanol.

Production capacity of ethanol is being expanded with tax credit money and should reach 8 billion gallons a year by 2010. So how much is 8 billion? In 2005, the US consumed 134 billion gallons of gasoline. 8 is 6% of 134. So, if ADM (and others) reach their goal, they will “replace” 6% of gasoline.

When ethanol is mixed with gasoline, it changes the evaporation rate in gasoline unfavorably, which then requires a different refining process. We are already refining 45 different blends of gasoline around the country. Each blend must be kept separate from the other blends. All of that means separate pipes, tanks and trucks. If we add ethanol, we may have up to 90 blends. And UP goes the price at the pump.

Last, researchers have shown that if you add in the underlying energy consuming processes - tilling the field, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, storing, transporting, processing and finally, blending, then you have invested MORE than 26,000 btus into each gallon of ethanol making it a net energy consumer!

So far, all the efforts at replacing fossil fuels have fallen far short of the hopes or promises. For the production of electricity, like it or not, we are going nuclear. France is already 100%. We are at 10% but with 80 new plants in the planning stage, by 2040 we will be well past 50%. We still have no way to dispose of the spent fuel, most of it is stored at the plant site waiting to be taken out to Nevada.

Taxpayers need to be watchful as there are efforts afoot to put the cost of the 8o power plants squarely on the backs of long suffering taxpayers as part of the National Security Plan. Then, after “you” have paid for the plants, they will “sell” you the electricity for about 10-12 cents a KW. That’s called screwing you "going and coming!" But, what the hey? How much money did you send your congressman last year? You can bet the Nuclear Power Industry sent them 10s of millions. Don’t we really have the BEST Congress money can buy?

CFR. Campaign Finance Reform. NO private money allowed. Taxpayers pay for it all including primary campaigns. It would be the best investment in democracy we could ever make! Guys like Ron Paul would have the same shot as Hillary Clinton. Hmm? Is that what you really want?

Data from an article by Robert Bryce found at slate.msn.com...

[edit on 9/11/2007 by donwhite]

Originally posted by donwhite

Last, researchers have shown that if you add in the underlying energy consuming processes - tilling the field, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, storing, transporting, processing and finally, blending, then you have invested MORE than 26,000 btus into each gallon of ethanol making it a net energy consumer!

That's why I'm not advocating the use of fertile land that can be used for other crops in the production of ethanol. Check out the links I provided above. They use areas that are currently unproductive. Now that's the way forward

I have no problem with any legitimate research into anything we don’t already know. Because research is usually on a time and materials basis and very much labor intensive, we do need to be wary of chasing after things we don’t know. We don’t need a guy chasing lab assistants while drawing $3,000 a day.

Suppose we already had the pressurizing of hydrogen down pat and safe containers a dime a dozen, we still could not use hydrogen as a fuel. There are currently over 600,000 gasoline retailers and probably not more than 500 hydrogen outlets. Mostly in CA. It will take a long time and tons of money to develop a network of outlets that will support travel outside a smallish city.

The local utility company tried hydrogen in the mid 1980s. They bought a small fleet of GMC pickup fitted out to use hydrogen and installed the necessary equipment to dispense it at a downtown location. After 3 years they quietly gave it up.

Battery technology has increased several orders of magnitudes over the past 2 decades. Windmills are always going to be the greenest makers of electricity. But I think you are talking $15 million per mill and at 10 cents a kw how long will it take to recover that investment? The Bay of Fundy is still not dammed so there goes the best tide pool in the world. Biodiesel is best when you can get used cooking oil for free.

Geothermal is great but it is so spread out it is hard to imagine how we can capitalize on it and still have Old Faithful to show the grand kids. I know Iceland thrives on it but when the Big Nine Oh comes, Iceland may be no more.

Yes, we need to keep working. We need to invest money and tons of money into alternative fuels. Not because Arabs hate democracy as Bush43 explains it, but because the earth is getting warmer, faster. And that will have consequences we cannot begin to predict.

Which brings me to my favorite compliant, overpopulation. We are sowing the wind and we will reap the whirlwind.

[edit on 9/11/2007 by donwhite]